Divorce Support Forums: Is swapping clothes for visitation a burden?

Age also matters as I have seen, teens care more about waht they wear and will get downright angry at a parent who prevents them from taking thier favorite outfit to their other parent's house.

When my stepkid's mother first tried to pull the nonsense of not allowing them to bring their packed bags to our house, we simply bought them clothing, and continued ot buy more as we saw fit. The first ENTIRE WARDROBE replacement was cheap junk that the kids didn't much like, but at least they had stuff here for the times thier mother pulled this trick on them, and she had them KIND of convinced that since she paid for it, she got to keep it at HER house and let them take it only if SHE agreed to it. THey KIND of understood. But then we started shopping with them for holidays and birthdays and they started getting really COOL clothing here, and when they asked of COURSE it was THEIR clothing so they could do with it as they saw fit... what were WE going to do with it when they were gone, and they were responsible (old) enough to handle it and bring it back if they wnated to wear it here. So not only did we get to be the generous ones, but we got to be the ones who they KNOW are not trying to hurt their relationship wtih the other parent, and we go tot be the ones who are COOL enough to buy the stuff they prefer, and whenever we see them these days, they're wearing something we got them.

It's funny how as they get older and responsible enough to pack their own clothing, CHOOSE their own clothing, etc... they start to see through their mother's alienating stuff. Age really DOES matter. And as much as it matters in the kids' ability to help otu with this stuff, it also matters in thier ability to see the truth of how we got to this push-pull tug of war over their lcothing... it matters in thier ability to interpret what has happened and to control thier own reaction to it.

When it started, they were too young to do the entire job of packing for themselves... though if they'd been trained at a younger age, they could have taken on a task or two of remembering to bring some of the stuff back. But their mother put her foot in it when she entirely stepped in front of them, not allowing them to even take the luggage which they had packed (with our help on what to pack), out of the house. Sadly, for OUR kids to handle this, they had to get old enough to stand up to their mother and tell her that she was wrong to not allow them to take thier own luggage and clothing to thier father's house for a vacation... but they did, they got old enough to do that stuff and they are now packing for themselves for our place, packing again to go back to her place, choosing thier own clothing (with a little bit of guidance about fit & quality), and remembering to toss things they're not taking back to thier mother's house into the laundry basket so that the laundry fairy will get it clean before they come back. Next step in their aging process, revealing the laundry fairy's true identity and getting them to help in this chore as well... after all, if they REALLY cant' find a college within a 1500 mile radius of parents, they're going to have to learn to do thier own laundry also.

It's amazing how quickly they start to grow up and learn to do more stuff when you have worked out a plan for making it about them (where you are doing it all for them at first, and they learn to take over part of it for themselves by watching what you do) and not so much about the fight that thier other parent wants to wage with YOU!